a simple question... I hope

so I'm gonna reformat my compy, and backing up my mp3s onto DVDs is easy enough. However I have quite a few playlists on my itunes that took me a damn long time to finally sort them. Picking out songs I don't want, etc. (like adding every song in the genre "rock" but removing sum41 songs afterwards)

I know itunes has an "export song list" and "export library" feature. My question is that if I use those features, when it comes time to import them, will itunes automatically look in the old locations of where the mp3s used to be? so all I have to do is place them back in the same file structure they were in before and everything is cool? all my playlists, etc. will be back?

**also posted in /g/ but figured "what the hell? 2wice the fun"

if you put the music files on the playist into a folder [ctrl+a -> drag], zip the folder, then burn it, it should stay in perfect order.

wow...I can't believe I didn't know you could do that. I also had no idea anonymous was such a genius. Thanks man, that made all my problems go away.

>>3
well, how smart did you expect anonymous to think you were? you said 2wice, after all.

Enjoy losing all your non-ID3-stored metadata (i.e. song added tmes, playback counts, iTS-retrieved art etc.

iTunes 7 has a Back up to disc feature in the file menu now, you should use that as I presume it doesn't trash your iTunes database file. Though if you simply do a lot of manual work in making sure your iTunes Music folder is exactly as it was, it should all work out okay - but remember that the path to your music must be identical or iTunes will lose track of everything unless you spend some time hacking the xml file.

    Enjoy losing all your non-ID3-stored metadata (i.e. song added tmes, playback counts, iTS-retrieved art etc


Because those are so fucking important. OH MY FUCKING GOD, I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I LISTENED TO THIS PIECE OF SHIT! TO ITEUNS!

>>6
Well, you can feel this way, but it negates a bunch of reasons to use iTunes to begin with. Basically if you let your metadata go away you lose a lot of flexibility with smart playlists, your ability to filter out stuff you don't listen to often, or even more basic things like saved positions in audiobooks or adjusted volume and start\stop positions. It's just kinda lame to lose the metadata as it can build up to be useful\interesting over time.